What am I missing?

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Talks in New York with the unnamed banks are part of Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo’s effort to stabilize the bond guarantors and bolster the market’s finances, said agency spokesman Andrew Mais in an interview. Insurers MBIA Inc. gained 33 percent in New York trading and Ambac Financial Group Inc. soared 72 percent.

New capital may help preserve the top credit ratings for the bond guarantors such as MBIA, the industry’s largest, and halt any erosion of investor confidence in the $2.4 trillion of assets they guarantee. Ambac, MBIA’s biggest rival, lost its AAA grade from Fitch Ratings this month on concerns that losses tied to subprime mortgages may increase. *

Let me see if I’ve got this straight… Banks/financial institutions hold a lot of iffy CDOs (aka Big Shitpile/matryoshka lemons) – bundles of loans that likely contain sub-prime stuff that may default. They’ve covered themselves against the possibility of the loans going bad by buying insurance from monoline insurers (MBIA and Ambac are the ones in the news). Now, loans are going bad – it’s hitting the fan. The worry shifts to the insurers – how are they going to make good? Because folks are thinking that the MBIAs of the world aren’t going to be able to cover the CDO losses, their stock price tanks. Low stock price = even less capital in reserve at the insurers. If the monoline insurers go tango uniform (toes-up tits-up – de-bowdlerized by audience request), the balance sheets of the institutions holding the CDOs take awful hits. So, lets have the banks (some of whom have got to be holding the paper in question) bail out the people who are insuring them.

Seems a bit circular to me – my guess – only a matter of time before I, as a taxpayer, have the privilege of bailing out Wall Street…

Update – check the comments if you are interested in the topic. Prof. Kleiman replies to my email query:

…if the monolines’ guarantees are seen to be worthless, the shitpile grows. (I love “matryoshka lemons,” by the way.) And they could suffer from a kind of “run on the bank” even if they’re actually solvent. So it’s possible that pumping more equity capital in would actually stabilize the situtation, whether it’s the banks’ capital or someone else’s. But the banks have an especially strong reason to want to stanch the bleeding.

Follow up and new stuff

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I am adding new tags to my posts – starting immediately and as I feel like it, I’ll use Chas’ post typology. I’m going to enhance and extend** a bit:

Type1 – !warning – minimal original content!, other than perhaps an “Ooh, shiny!” from yrs truly.

Type2 – what I did on my summer vacation feat. Deep Thoughts. In other words, things I’m thinking about.

Type3 – eats.

So, the first official type1:

Quite some time ago I posted on the work of Walton Ford. I clicked to the Taschen Books web site yesterday and on the home page? Info about Pancha Tantra, a beautiful bestiary. “Bruegel by way of Borges” indeed – I wish I could afford a copy (n.b. if I could afford a copy, I likely would not be working a “normal” job).

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Read this (and the comments). It’s caused me to read some new-to-me Orwell, re-read a bunch of T. S. Eliot and think a little more…

** “enhance and extend” is oftentimes IT-corporatespeak for pervert and make proprietary.

A walk with the dogs

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Inspired by the use of flickrSLiDR at Curious Expeditions, I took my camera with me when Dinah, Janey and I headed out for a stroll this morning. Boone stayed home by the wood stove – he’s had a tough couple days (just old age stuff) and neither he nor I were interested in running the oldster into the ground. So, my slide show of dogs ‘n woods:

More LOC Flickr

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All Library of Congress photos tagged “newmexico” here.

This is gorgeous – I had to post it:

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And these pictures remind me of a favorite movie – Where the Rivers Flow North – though these shots are 14 years after the time portrayed in the film. Put it on your to-see list – Rip Torn and Tantoo Cardinal are fantastic in it. Cardinal especially – her character talks in a way I’ve heard just a couple of times – from really old Quebecois/native woods folk.
Backstage at the girlie show:

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The barker:

Infoglut

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Bring it! The Library of Congress Flickrstream:

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Above: Lewis Tewanima

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Via WWdN.

Update – this sounds interesting:

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Sir Genille, twelfth Baronet of his line, has had a checkered career. Born a second son of the eleventh Baronet he ran away to set [sea?] in 1883 when 13 years old, later enlisting as a private in the army and fighting in several battles in Egypt, was wounded, captured and escaped. After a sad experience with money lenders in London [!], he hunted big game in Africa, wandered about the Orient and finally turned up in San Francisco. Society made a fuss over him but he disappeared to be found again, this time in Kansas City, as a day laborer. * (warning – pdf)

A variation

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“I’m an angry Rhesus brain controlling a titanium body, from the government and I’m here to help.”

I don’t think this was the kind of robot (OK, properly this one’s a cyborg) overlord that Rogers was imagining. Unfortunately, given the way the world works, I think it’s a lot more likely that machine-phase overlords will turn out to be upset simians rather than cool, dispassionate intelligences. And just to clarify – I mean a different species of upset simian…

NAAC

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This should be a lot of fun – and it’s practically in my back yard. Frogs, the Black Jungle greenhouses (carnivorous plants, orchids, various and sundry exotics) and perhaps a good field trip or two. Plans right now are for “camping” at Erving State Forest. There are those who feel that no room service = camping – I’m on the other end of the spectrum. Running water and toilets? Lap ‘o luxury.

Food

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Inspired by Xtin (polite way of saying “I’m a copycat”) and menu-wise by Xeni J’s tweets from Guatemala, I decided to document this evening’s eats. On the menu: lamb stew. No recipe – this one is a matter of standing back and throwing appropriate ingredients into the pot and seasoning to taste.

To start – put 4 slices of bacon into a stew pot. Cook the bacon until it’s done to your liking; set it aside to drain. Brown 1 1/2 to 2 lbs. of cubed stew lamb (in 3 – 4 batches) in the bacon grease over high heat. While you’re browning the lamb, eat the bacon. Reduce heat a bit and toss 2 chopped onions and a bunch of garlic into the pot (add oil if you need to – I did). When the onions are done – I went for somewhere between translucent and browning – put the lamb back in.

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Get the heat back up a bit and pour a bottle of beer over everything.

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Add seasonings and simmer uncovered until you reduce the liquid a bit, then cover. I seasoned with cumin, a tiny bay leaf, a small cinnamon stick and some canned chipotles (with some of the adobo they were canned in thrown in for good measure). I should have used lots of green chiles, but the can of smoked red ones was irresistible.

I usually let the stew rest for an hour or so at this point – a matter of scheduling and doing a little taste mingling. Today was no different. When it’s time to get moving again, dump in 1 or 2 cans of beans. I like small white ones – Great Northerns got the nod today. You can do what you like, but I am not a fan of kidney beans in a dish like this – they’re obtrusive – big, thick skins, too chewy and too much color.

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Serve garnished with a handful of cilantro; sour cream and a piece of corn pudding on the side. You could put cheese on top – I’d think queso menonita would work – or cheese on the side with some fry bread. Yum.

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While eating, think about milpas, Peckinpah and a shady ramada.

Bookstack

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The on-deck circle:

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A very bloggy stack. From the top: nos. 2 and 3 recommended by Steve, nos. 4 and 5 by COOP, and number 8 (indirectly somehow – GoodReads?) by RKO’C. The Haraway Reader is cheating – I’ve read a couple essays already – just wanted to amp up the gravitas a bit.

One last pre-primary political post

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Something to keep an eye on – there are a lot of independents in NH. We can vote in either primary; you walk in, ask for an R or D ballot, vote and then, if you’d like to revert to undeclared status, swing by a table on your way out to sign a piece of paper renouncing your presumed (assumed?) party affiliation.

John McCain needs independents. He did very well eight years ago, but that’s ancient history. If Barack Obama (and to a lesser degree, John Edwards) can rally independents to his banner, McCain may suffer. There are not a lot of 27-percenter independents – McCain’s willingness to stay in Iraq for a hundred years may not be a selling point – and Obama is enjoying a significant ‘holy sh1t, maybe this guy can do it’ post -IA bounce. On the other hand, McCain is not as hated by the local R establishment as he is, apparently, at a national level, and there is local experience with the Mittster (we saw him before he became a conservative – a conversion that coincided, unsurprisingly, with his decision to run for President).

Update – I didn’t see this till after I posted (I swear!):

If the independents-go-Democratic scenario plays out again in New Hampshire, the Democratic primary winner will almost certainly be Obama. And the winner of a Republican primary cleansed of independents and dominated by the conservative base would not necessarily be John McCain.

end of update

It’s going to be interesting – as long as the little man looking for a balcony (9/11!) continues to get whupped, I’ll be happy. As a thank you to readers who have put up with my ranting – a new fave webcomic: the Perry Bible Fellowship.

Quote of the day

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I watch what I do to see what I really believe.
– Sister Helen Prejean *

It’s impossible to get into another person’s head. Why may be interesting, but what is the thing that I can measure and judge. Just sayin’…